Chapter TwoThe Marquis set off from Berkeley Square the following morning in a good humour.
He had slept well. It did not concern him that most of the members of his household had been up all night.
The coachman in particular had sent ahead a team in charge of four grooms at the first light of dawn so that they would be ready for the Marquis to change horses at Chelmsford.
He ate a hearty breakfast, not drinking, as so many of his contemporaries did, brandy or beer, but coffee.
Coffee had become very popular in London and new coffee shops were continually opening to supply the demand for it.
It was also superseding tea as the fashionable drink among the Ladies of Quality, which made many of the older men stick to their contention that ale or brandy was the proper drink for a gentleman
